The Outpost is a permanent progression system added with Frozen Trail, giving Raiders a personal base that can be expanded with additional rooms and developed alongside the Research Station. It also changes how you should manage ARC Raiders Items, since materials that seem unimportant during a normal raid can become requirements for Sheltered Retreat, room construction, or research upgrades. If your long-term goal is Weapon Amplification, unlocking the Outpost is one of the first progression gates you need to clear.
How to Unlock the Outpost
The Outpost is unlocked by completing the Sheltered Retreat Project. The Project has three stages covering exploration, resource collection, and ARC combat, so don’t treat it as a single material hand-in.
Before starting, activate the relevant Project objective from the Outpost tab. For the opening stage, you also need a Camera before going Topside.
Photograph a Farmland House on Blue Gate
The first Sheltered Retreat objective sends you to Ruined Homestead on Blue Gate. Bring a Camera and photograph one of the required farmland houses in the area.
Use a simple objective-first approach:
- Activate the Sheltered Retreat objective.
- Bring a Camera into Blue Gate.
- Travel to Ruined Homestead.
- Find a valid farmland house.
- Take the required photograph.
- Confirm that the Project has registered the objective.
- Extract once continuing the raid is no longer worth the risk.
You don’t need to clear Ruined Homestead just to complete the photography objective. Once the picture registers, staying in the area for unnecessary fights only puts your carried equipment and loot at greater risk.
Cameras can be obtained through normal Topside progression, including purchasing one from Shani, crafting one at the Workbench, or finding one while raiding.
Gather the Sheltered Retreat Building Materials
The second stage requires four types of construction materials:
- 3 Planks
- 5 Sheet Metal
- 10 ARC Alloy
- 3 Advanced Electrical Components
These materials are committed to the Project, so check your Stash before starting another farming run. You may already have part of the requirement from normal raids.
Planks and Sheet Metal remain relevant after Sheltered Retreat, making them especially useful to keep. Spending every stack as soon as you return from Topside can slow down the later room and Research Station upgrades.
Complete the ARC Damage Objective
The final Sheltered Retreat stage asks you to safeguard the building site by dealing damage to the required ARC targets, including flying ARC and Bullies.
Treat this as an objective run rather than a kill-farming run. Follow the damage counters shown in your active Project tracker and prioritize safe engagements where you can deal damage without committing your entire loadout to an exposed fight.
For flying ARC, use normal encounters to build objective progress whenever possible. For Bullies, Pendola Pass becomes relevant, and the same map is also useful for gathering materials needed during later Outpost progression.
Finishing Sheltered Retreat establishes your Outpost and opens the next part of the progression system.
Outpost Level 2 to Level 4 Upgrade Materials
The initial Outpost starts with its base room. Additional rooms increase the Outpost through three more levels, and every expansion has its own construction cost.
| Outpost Upgrade | Required Materials |
| Level 1 to Level 2 | 3 Steel Cable, 20 Sheet Metal, 3 Cable Strippers |
| Level 2 to Level 3 | 3 Epoxy Buckets, 35 Planks, 3 Hand Drills |
| Level 3 to Level 4 | 40 Sheet Metal, 3 Laser Levels, 3 Insulation Rolls |
The bulk materials are easy to underestimate. Reaching Level 4 requires substantial amounts of Sheet Metal and Planks, while the specialized components can become the real bottleneck if you haven’t been saving them during earlier raids.
Instead of waiting until an expansion becomes available, start collecting for the next room as soon as you know what it requires.
What to Keep While Progressing
Your Outpost keep-list should include:
- Steel Cable
- Sheet Metal
- Cable Strippers
- Epoxy Buckets
- Planks
- Hand Drills
- Laser Levels
- Insulation Rolls
Pendola Pass is particularly relevant to the new construction-material loop, while Industrial and Mechanical loot areas are useful places to check for several tool-type components.
Treat those locations as farming targets rather than guaranteed spawn points. ARC Raiders still rewards adapting to what you actually find during a raid instead of assuming one container or building will always provide the missing item.
Don’t Confuse Outpost Levels With Research Station Levels
Adding rooms increases your Outpost level, but Outpost expansion and Research Station upgrades are separate resource investments.
That distinction is important. Building the next room can open the path toward another Research Station level, but you still need to supply the workstation’s own upgrade materials.
A progression-focused Raider should therefore think in alternating goals:
Build the required Outpost room → upgrade the Research Station → prepare for the next room → repeat
This approach also makes Stash management easier. Instead of keeping every component without a plan, check the next room and workstation recipes and reserve the items that belong to your immediate progression path.
How the Outpost Leads to Weapon Amplification
Weapon Amplification sits near the end of this progression chain. To reach that system, you need to push the Outpost far enough to support the required high-level Workshop development, including Research Station IV and Gunsmith IV.
Amplification represents a fifth weapon quality level for supported weapons. Rather than acting only as another conventional stat upgrade, amplification paths can change weapon behavior through specialized modifications.
Examples introduced with Frozen Trail include changes such as a full-auto Burletta, a scoped Renegade, and Rattler amplification options involving incendiary ammunition or magazine changes.
For players targeting this system, the practical order is:
- Complete Sheltered Retreat.
- Establish the Outpost.
- Add rooms until the Outpost reaches Level 4.
- Upgrade the Research Station as each progression gate opens.
- Reach the required Gunsmith level.
- Move into Amplified Weapon research and crafting.
Skipping the workstation requirements isn’t possible simply because the Outpost itself has reached its maximum room level.
Furniture or Research: What Should You Build First?
Furniture Designs provide a separate Outpost progression track. Once learned, these designs allow you to craft furniture and customize the new base rather than leaving every room empty.
If your immediate target is Amplified Weapons, however, construction and workstation progression should consume your important materials first. Decorative spending is easier to justify once the next Outpost and Research Station requirements are already covered.
That creates a simple decision rule:
Need more combat progression: save materials for rooms and Workshop upgrades.
Already covered the next upgrade: use surplus resources on furniture and Outpost customization.
This prevents cosmetic construction from unexpectedly delaying a workstation upgrade that requires the same general pool of raid resources.
Plan Your Loot Around the Next Outpost Upgrade
The best way to progress the Outpost is to stop treating every raid as an isolated farming run. Before deploying, check the next room or Research Station recipe, identify the components you’re missing, and give those items higher extraction priority when they appear.
The same rule applies if you’re comparing other progression options such as ARC Raiders Coins for sale: currency and Outpost construction materials solve different problems, and the upgrade screen still requires its listed components. Your Stash planning therefore matters regardless of how much currency you have available.
After unlocking the Outpost, prepare Level 2 materials while keeping useful Level 3 components, then repeat the process for Level 4. Keep Research Station and Gunsmith requirements in the same progression plan, extract rare construction parts instead of treating them as disposable loot, and only shift heavily into furniture once the next major Workshop upgrade is already funded.